Myth: if it is encrypted, it is secure
Truth: if it is not encrypted, it is not secure

A good password is one that's hard to guess, yet easy to remember. So here are the top 10 ways to choose a password, in roughly increasing difficulty. If you don't use any of the first 5, you're well on your way. The stats are very rough estimates (for comparison purposes, an 8-character password is used for most calculations):

Default (same as none):

Many programs and services assign a default password . Change this to a new password immediately.

stats: If a word has 2 letters, there's 4 (22) ways to capitalize it (at, At, aT, AT). If a word has 8 letters, there's 256 ways. Similar combinations (2letters) apply to each word in the dictionary. Guesstimate: There's around 32,000 8-letter words, which gives 8 million (32,000 x 256) mixed-case 8-letter passwords

Mixed-case Word with Number(s)

examples: 9fiNgeRS, loVELy68

stats: Tacking on a number from 0-9 before or after a word gives 20 more variations to the password. Using 00-99 before or after the word, gives 200 variations. Guesstimate: there's some 19,000 6-letter words, and 243 million variations (19,000 x 64 x 200) of 6-letter-word 2-number passwords.

Why? If someone currently knows your password, change it and they won't. If someone is attempting a brute-force attack on your password, the hope is that you're changing it to something they've already tried and found to be wrong.

The longer the password, the harder it is to guess.

note: many systems limit passwords to 8 characters.

Some clever people are using social engineering to obtain passwords.

If somebody calls or emails, requesting your password, it's a dumb idea to give it to them.

Of course nobody would sticky-note a password to their monitor, or under a keyboard.

Find out how your password rates according to the above standards. This is a measure of the difficulty hackers/crackers will have in 'guessing' your password. Enter your password below, and get an approval rating.

Password:

Note: Do NOT just press your Enter key, you must click the RateThisPassword button: